FOGeologist
Member
My favorite plane is an FMS 1450mm P-51B Mustang, one of the Bluenose B*****ds of Bodney, "Dallas Doll." With a 4s the aircraft is very scale. On 5s this ship really is capable of aggressive flight. The added mass of the 5000mAh battery makes landing a bit of a puzzle - the ship will sink on approach at low throttle settings, and you often have to add power to address the sink rate. Still, it can catch you by surprise as that monster prop forms one heck of a disk of air-resisting stuff.
So after impressing the heck out of my flying partner, I knew that I had to bring the ship in. Sadly, I was (as usual) fighting crosswinds and the ship drifted to port and towards a curb (we fly off a school drive). I throttled up and took her around. Next approach, things were looking pretty good, but a car started down the drive and I had to abort. Third approach had me high and a little fast, but I'd forgotten how the ship will sink at 0% throttle, and I let the ship sink... until it began to look like I might need a little throttle to avoid the "road closed" sign at the end of the drive.
Of course, by the time you think the sink rate might be getting kind of high, you've already blown your opportunity... especially when a 6', road-wide set of signs is at the end of the runway. I began to throttle up, and the ship continued to sink (you've got to be a little ahead of these larger planes; they're not 1m birds which are light and responsive) but I was already too close to the sign.
The bird crashed into the sign and fell 6 feet to the deck, and I groaned. Picking it up, I was shocked to find essentially minimal damage - the area below the nose (it's an intake) absorbed virtually all of the impact by crushing. This ship has two grates on either side of the intake (a scale detail) which just happened to be completely open, probably for cooling purposes. This "crumple zone" took almost all of the brunt. The propeller was broken, but the hub and the nosecone were only lightly marred.
Last night, I took the ship apart and verified the minor damage, and made a plan to fix it. I prepared a spaghetti pot with boiling water and took the fuselage to the kitchen, where I poured hot water over the nosecone with a big spoon. Much of the crushed EPO foam re-expanded and I was able to push a bunch of it to the front.
I went to bed and this afternoon, I hot glued all the cracked foam portions together. I lashed down the wayward scoop with two hot-glued barbecue skewers, driven at angles into the foam, then cut them off.
This afternoon I found that I could emplace some ply in the air passageway to the ESC and lock in the damaged foam.
I want to note that after injecting some hot glue into the EPO's cracks, I (painfully) discovered that EPO foam has no problem reflecting the heat of hot glue back to the hot glue, and it takes a dog's age to cool off and secure the two surfaces together, during which time the glue has time to leak out onto your fingers.
So after impressing the heck out of my flying partner, I knew that I had to bring the ship in. Sadly, I was (as usual) fighting crosswinds and the ship drifted to port and towards a curb (we fly off a school drive). I throttled up and took her around. Next approach, things were looking pretty good, but a car started down the drive and I had to abort. Third approach had me high and a little fast, but I'd forgotten how the ship will sink at 0% throttle, and I let the ship sink... until it began to look like I might need a little throttle to avoid the "road closed" sign at the end of the drive.
Of course, by the time you think the sink rate might be getting kind of high, you've already blown your opportunity... especially when a 6', road-wide set of signs is at the end of the runway. I began to throttle up, and the ship continued to sink (you've got to be a little ahead of these larger planes; they're not 1m birds which are light and responsive) but I was already too close to the sign.
The bird crashed into the sign and fell 6 feet to the deck, and I groaned. Picking it up, I was shocked to find essentially minimal damage - the area below the nose (it's an intake) absorbed virtually all of the impact by crushing. This ship has two grates on either side of the intake (a scale detail) which just happened to be completely open, probably for cooling purposes. This "crumple zone" took almost all of the brunt. The propeller was broken, but the hub and the nosecone were only lightly marred.
Last night, I took the ship apart and verified the minor damage, and made a plan to fix it. I prepared a spaghetti pot with boiling water and took the fuselage to the kitchen, where I poured hot water over the nosecone with a big spoon. Much of the crushed EPO foam re-expanded and I was able to push a bunch of it to the front.
I went to bed and this afternoon, I hot glued all the cracked foam portions together. I lashed down the wayward scoop with two hot-glued barbecue skewers, driven at angles into the foam, then cut them off.
This afternoon I found that I could emplace some ply in the air passageway to the ESC and lock in the damaged foam.
I want to note that after injecting some hot glue into the EPO's cracks, I (painfully) discovered that EPO foam has no problem reflecting the heat of hot glue back to the hot glue, and it takes a dog's age to cool off and secure the two surfaces together, during which time the glue has time to leak out onto your fingers.
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